


old maid

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Eternal Punishment, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 10:43:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11378559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Ulala hasn't felt okay in a long time.





	old maid

In the end, it’s her knees that give way first, instead of her heart. The last of the – whatever the hell it is – vanishes, and Ulala stays where she is on the floor for an overlong moment, shaken and unmoving. Beside her Maya is catching her breath, one hand clutched around her arm, her expression pulled taut and pained in a way Ulala neither recalls ever seeing, nor knows what to make of.

The policeman – Suou, was he? – shuts off his phone with a clipped click, and in that instant, time jumpstarts itself back to life. He turns around, face stoic, and Ulala’s gaze falls to her lap. Her hands are wrapped, but the tremors show through nevertheless.

She looks up. Maya is leaning towards her, arm outstretched. The strange look in her eyes has been replaced with one of concern, clear and earnest, and Ulala feels something burn, unexplainable, in the back of her throat, but eventually she takes Maya’s hand, the other woman’s palm held open in an offering, and Ulala’s taped knuckles close around Maya’s bare fingers as she helps her up to her feet in one easy motion.

They’re both standing now, eye to eye. She’s got one arm cradled tentatively around the other, residual warmth on her skin like pinpricks, little needles that sting instead of hurt, and if she winces at the resulting imagery, she’ll pretend otherwise. In the next second the feeling is gone, dying like the flames of a celebratory candle, blown out too soon. The smoke doesn’t bother to linger; it simply fades, threadlike wisps of toxin indistinguishable from stagnant air. It’s easier, Ulala thinks, to chalk it up to that and walk away.

(Easy isn’t the word she wants to use, but it cuts less deep than _convenient,_ and between the two options it’s diplomacy she turns to. She’s a compromiser. She has enough consolation prizes to last two lifetimes. Laid down so plainly these facts have no right to be this pitiful still, after so long.)

“Thanks,” she manages, distractedly. She doesn’t realize she’s been holding her breath until she lets go of it, useless air ejected in a ragged sigh. The gloomy lights flicker overhead the narrow hallway; the image of a mangled corpse dances in the back of her eyelids. She swallows dryness as her stomach narrowly avoids another flip. The floor is scuffed and offers no consolations.

“You okay, Ulala?” Maya’s voice pulls her back into reality. Paranoia, gathering thick in her mind like fog, scatters at the sound.

For a second, she doesn’t answer. Ulala hasn’t felt okay in a long time. There was a time, surely, when she was, or could’ve been, but she could more easily remember being sixteen, seventeen, and staring down a report card with red ink and her name on it, the conversation between her parents in the living room having long died down. She hadn’t known the weight of failure could be this crushing. And well, it didn’t turn out to be the end of the world, of course, but she truly wondered then, for the first time, if she’d find herself growing used to this feeling. If, when it came down to it, she’d choose resignation over resentment. As a teenager, the thought scared her: but now, at twenty-four, it merely tires.

Ulala hasn’t felt okay in a long time, but she knows that’s not what Maya means to ask, and so she draws herself away, nails pressing shallow crevices in the crook of her elbow. Don’t worry, she thinks to say, and at the same time the treacherous part of her mind whispers, knowing full well it will go unheard:  _no, of course that’s not what you mean._ _It never is._

“Yeah,” Ulala says instead, hiding her guilt behind a stale, wilting smile. It’s unconscious, easy, convenient. “I’m fine, Ma-ya.” Her thumb slides across the warm skin of her left hand and it’s nothing at all. Maya, for her part, seems convinced: she smiles back.

 

 

 

Calling that number wasn’t a conscious decision. A myriad of pathetic excuses surface, unbidden. She was drunk. She meant to call someone else, and her finger slipped on the speed dial. She didn’t know what it meant when she spoke into the speaker, in a hushed whisper that might as well have been a scream, that she wanted Maya dead.

She didn’t want Maya to die, but that didn’t mean she would’ve hated to watch her friend get knocked down a peg or two – to see how  _she_  likes the view from where Ulala stands, has stood for all her life. And is that so wrong? Is it?

After they leave the sanitarium, Ulala feels something inside her crack. Suou approaches her in the middle of stocking up at the drugstore, concern showing through his otherwise-stern visage. He doesn’t put a hand on her shoulder in a fumbling attempt to comfort, or something like that, and she doesn’t know why she half-expects him to. Instead he maintains comfortable distance, clearing his throat before asking if she’s fine. The cabinet is full of pills, colorful with unreadable labels. Polite, decorous: did something happen at the sanitarium, Serizawa-kun? You’ve acted strange for a while now. His voice is a smooth, discreet whisper, sympathetic instead of accusatory, and yet she still feels like a suspect hunched over the chair at a detention facility with faulty lightbulbs.

She's guilty. That's the thing. 

“No, it’s nothing,” Ulala manages, shaking her head and smiling, a tacked-on, silly-me thing, even as she grasps the medicine container a little too tightly. She’s not a good liar, but she’s not a terrible one either, and Suou doesn’t seem the type to press on, so she adds, “I’m fine now! I was just… a bit shaken up, back there. My line of work doesn’t involve seeing dead bodies and delusional killers, unlike yours, so, well… you can imagine the shock, Mr. Sergeant. Three is already enough to last me a lifetime, that’s for sure!”

“If that’s what you say, Serizawa-kun,” Suou says, tactful as always, relenting with an ease that’s almost disappointing. But he sounds unconvinced. “But please do tell if anything comes up. Amano-kun might be worried too.”

Ulala looks away; pretends the aisle is very interesting. And then she hears Bao grumbling from the other end of the shelves, telling them to get a move-on, already, and when Suou turns his attention she almost finds it in herself to feel relieved.

 

 

 

When she comes to, the first thing she sees is Maya.  _Ah,_  thinks Ulala.  _So you saved me after all._  She doesn’t know if an apology is enough to erase what she did, but she tries anyway; Maya’s smile is absent, but her expression is understanding, if wounded, and Ulala knows she probably deserves much worse than a headache and a hurtful look.

She watches Bao pummel Makimura to the ground on Suou’s behalf and thinks that in a few days' time, she’ll probably regret telling him to stop. If she had the strength to even raise her fist at him, she would, but Maya’s lap isn’t an uncomfortable place to sleep on and she’s losing consciousness anyway, so she lets it go. The last of her energy drains away as Maya runs her fingers through her hair in what Ulala assumes is an attempt to soothe (it’s working).

Her palm is still warm where she struck Maya in a grinning moment of unbridled envy. She closes it, distantly remembering Maya’s hand on hers, pulling her up, and wonders if she was ever a good person at all.

**Author's Note:**

> 22/07/17: added about ~100 words
> 
> 29/09/17: my first p2 fanfic! written back while i was... not very far in ep, actually. sorry. i meant this to be shippy but in the end the balance tipped and it didn't happen.


End file.
